RUMOR: Nano to Transform into the next iPhone…does that seem crazy to anyone else?

So, MSNBC and JP Morgan think that Apple is going to turn the iPod Nano into a phone and charge $300 for it.

Does that sound completely insane to anyone else?

You know “analysts” are getting worse than us bloggers when it comes to just making crap up. Here’s what JP Morgan’s Kevin Chang had to say to MSNBC. “We believe that iPod Nano will be converted into a phone because it’s probably the only way for Apple to launch a lower end phone without severely cannibalizing iPod Nano,” he said noting that the new phone could have “rather limited functionality.”

Let me ask you this…what would be the point of:

A) Eliminating the best selling iPod brand, style, and price point?

B) Making an Apple phone that can’t do any of the amazing stuff that the iPhone does except play music?

I’m still not sure why the entire world seems to think that Apple has to do a nano-styled iPhone. If you make the screen any slimmer the iPhone would be pretty much unusable in my opinion. The most compelling features, like the web, on the phone would be completely useless on a significantly smaller screen.

An iPod Nano that was turned into a phone would be a glorified Rokr. The only real difference would be the number of tracks it could hold. That would basically take Apple from making a completely revolutionary convergence device in the iPhone, and following that up with a pretty normal candy bar syled cell phone. What would be the point in that?

Patents, especially from Apple, are no way to actually tell what the company is going to release, and “unnamed sources in the supply chain” are not especially credible sources to begin with, but the concept here seems about as flawed as any analyst “report” I’ve ever read…what do you think?

Comments

Apple is smart, very smart. They are not going to release an iPhone Nano. If they do, they will kill both their iPod sales and kill the sales of the high-end iPhone.

There is no middle ground here. Either you have an iPod, or you have an iPhone. I can’t see anyone carrying both. Unless maybe you sport a shuffle. But that would be pointless, since it’s only 1G of additional storage. Myself, I carry a 30G iPod. I am not buying an iPhone because I do not want to carry two devices, and I can’t accept the 22G loss in storage.

Apple knows this. That is why a high capacity iPod with a multi-touch widescreen interface is imminent. (For people who don’t want an iPhone.) The nano is a niche market. It’s for people that just want an iPod; don’t care about features or capacity, they just want an iPod. The nano will continue to satisfy that sect of the market, and nothing more.

The patent application that has surfaced (thus the buzz), is from Nov 2006, and was probably just an idea that Apple was throwing around at the time for the iPhone. It could also be in place to thwart competitors.

I think the real question is truly how accurate has Kevin Chang and MSNBC been in the past in predicting Apples’ moves. It’s time to start posting links to a history of predictions by all these self proclaimed industry experts. I have a dart board that has similar accuracy when it comes to predictions.

Hrm. How did the iPod nano come about? Oh, yeah. They killed off the mini: the best-selling iPod brand, style, and price point at the time.

B) Making an Apple phone that canâ€™t do any of the amazing stuff that the iPhone does except play music?

Some people don’t like a phone that tries to be everything. I myself have a phone that only makes calls and SMS, and nothing else. No games, no camera, just a plain old phone. Build an iPod into it, and I’d swap my old phone in for it. Not that I wouldn’t want a regular iPhone, but some of the features on that (camera, YouTube, etc.), I’d never use.

“Hrm. How did the iPod nano come about? Oh, yeah. They killed off the mini: the best-selling iPod brand, style, and price point at the time.”

The iPod Nano was simply the next generation of the iPod Mini…they didn’t kill off the line. That’s like saying the color version of the Video iPod killed off the previous iPod line because they were thicker and monochrome.

What we’re talking about here is a completely different product that would double the price of an iPod nano.

Mikes right Geoff, Nano was just a rename from the Mini. By your logic Apple killed with iPod when they made the “iPod Video” They still have the 3 sizes, large(video), medium(nano much better than the name mini imo) and small (shuffle)

As for a smaller iPhone I think thats really stupid. A cheaper model would be a nice addition but making it “nano” like would be a mistake for the season reason mike said, the screen would be too small. Same reason why the iPod Nano doesn’t play movies. No one wants to see movies on a 1″ screen. Let alone email, and the web. I can only see one iPhone with varying drive space.